


Dog Outcast

by Sectionladvivi, Tamoszius (Sectionladvivi)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Angst, Blood and Violence, Daddy Issues, Dimension Travel, Equestrian, Fantasy, M/M, Magic, Mental Health Issues, Misunderstandings, Protective Siblings, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-01-16 21:17:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21277871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sectionladvivi/pseuds/Sectionladvivi, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sectionladvivi/pseuds/Tamoszius
Summary: An outcast from a nomadic hellscape equestrian Death Culture gets booted out of his dimension into ours, meets a mentally ill college dropout who's scared to ride his horse after a bad accidentthen it probably gets way too serious by the end because i can't control myself





	1. check the back gate

Reagan’s number blinked angrily on his phone, and Astrid pretended he didn’t see it; his hands were busy, anyway, with rubber bands that he kept dropping, and slick with Mane N Tail leave-in conditioner.

“She’ll call Michael next, and he’ll tell her I’m at the barn and not to worry about it,” he told Lacey. The mare flicked an ear back at him but didn’t look up from her dinner. Food was the only way he could get her to stand still long enough to braid her mane without her constantly trying to climb into his pockets. “Not that she won’t worry anyway.”

Lacey lifted her nose from the hanging feed tub, muzzle grubby. He reached out to wipe grime off her nostril. “You’ve got more of that on your face than in your mouth. Do you know how much I spend on your SmartPaks?”

The phone kept buzzing. He wondered if his sister could somehow tell that he was standing a foot away from his phone ignoring her, the same way he could tell she was standing at the window of the apartment, glaring at the empty spot where his card should be.

He scratched Lacey’s withers. She yawned and shook her head and neck; a rubber band popped off one of her braids. “Why is your mane so thick?” he asked her. Another ear flick, and she dove back into her dinner.

“Knock knock,” said a voice, as a hand knocked on the stall door.

Astrid looked up over Lacey’s back to see Michael, a severe-looking black man approaching his seventies, Astrid’s trainer and the owner of the facility, looking back in at him.

Michael held up his phone, the name REAGAN COURY flashing on it, deadpan.

Astrid held up his conditioner-sticky hands. “My hands were busy.”

“You spend more time braiding that horse’s mane than you do in the saddle,” said Michael.

“But she looks so cute,” said Astrid, taking the mare’s dirty face in his arms and wiggling her loose lower lip. “Look how cute she is.”

“It’s late, Astrid. Leave that horse alone and go home.”

He couldn’t imagine a place he wanted to be less.

Michael must have seen it on his face. “All right,” he said. “You can stick around, clean tack. I’ll call your sister and tell her I held you back.”

“You’re the best!” Astrid called after the barn owner’s retreating back. All he got was a small shake of the head.

Astrid plucked Lacey’s lower lip for the last time. “Be good,” he said. “Don’t ruin those braids.”

She nipped his finger in reply.

Sitting alone in the tack room, surrounded by the smell of saddle soap and neatsfoot oil, Astrid felt some of the anxiety of the day began to ebb — the guilt, not so much.

He’d been wondering when Dr. Shaw would finally call his sister about all the missed appointments.

Astrid sat on an upturned bucket in the tack room. It wasn’t small, but scarce with room, full of tiers of saddle racks, all other free wall space dominated by bridle hooks. A little radio, so dusty and cobwebbed you couldn’t quite believe it was still working, played country at a low enough volume you couldn’t make out lyrics, only a wistful tone and fizzling hint of guitar. Barns like these, the radio was always on, no matter the hour or the station.

Through the solitary window, Astrid could see the main house, lit by the automatic flood lights of the gravel parking lot. He watched those lights flick off, and the lights of the house flick on, leaving Astrid the last person in the barn.

His body’s immediate reaction was to seize up, his face to crumple, and he dropped the wet sponge to bury his face in his hands.

“Fuck,” he said, in a muffled half-sob. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

The swear-sobbing turned into just swearing, as he forgot the soap on his hands, and managed to rub it in his eyes.

He made his way out of the tack room and down the barn aisle half blind, one hand scrubbing at his eyes, the other feeling its way along the stall doors.

He sensed danger the second before the thump of hooves warned him, and launched himself off the wall, just out of the reach of Big Iron’s snapping teeth.

The huge chestnut gazed balefully at him over the top of the stall door, grinding his teeth, ears flattened against his neck.

The gelding had about three hands on most horses in the barn, but none of their plump, glossy weight. Four months off the track had done nothing for the now ex-racehorse; all the supplements and extra feed seemed to slide off of him, as if he kept the weight off through sheer resentment. In those past four months, he’d managed to nail just about everyone at the barn with those teeth, and caused such hell with his stablemates that he’d finally been relegated to a stall in the unfinished row, by himself.

Astrid pointed a finger at the gelding, with the hand not clamped over his burning eye.

“Fuck you!”

Big Iron leered back, waiting for Astrid to misstep within reach of his teeth.

Flipping Big Iron the bird, Astrid finally made it to the bathroom, with its low water pressure faucet, old towels, and worn sign hanging on the wall that read: WHAT HAPPENS IN THE BARN, STAYS IN THE BARN. He dug out a roll of brown paper towels under the sink and spent a solid fifteen minutes rinsing his face, waiting for the stinging to stop.

His phone buzzed where he left it beside the sink.

Wiping his face with the paper towels, he lifted the phone and, surprised by the name, put it to his ear.

“Yeah?”

“Are you still down at the barn?” asked Michael.

“Yeah. Iron just tried to—”

“Can you drive down to the back pasture and make sure the gate is latched?”

“Sure. Why wouldn’t it be?”

“That new help,” said Michael, disgruntled. “Left without locking the ducks in. I want to make sure he didn’t forget anything else.”

“Okay, I can do that.” He stepped back into the barn aisle with a last wipe of his eye, tossing the balled up paper towel into a little wicker trash can. “Anything else you need me to do?”

“No,” said Michael. “Just check the gate and go home. If your sister gets any more worked up, she’ll drive up here in that awful car and scare the wildlife.”

Michael hung up.

Astrid pocketed his phone with a smile, picturing Michael glaring out the window, watching for a bumper stickered, habanero orange Prius to come trundling up the drive.

He passed Iron with another middle finger.

“Dick.”

The gelding glowered back.

Outside, closing the barn doors securely behind him, Astrid turned and put his back against them for a minute, looking up at the stars.

The night was clear.

Something about the sheer width and depth of the stars, the power they held outside of town, made his breath catch in his throat again, threatening more tears.

“Fuck _OFF_,” he said to his stinging eyes, rubbing them again on his sleeve and trudging up the walk to his car.

The Mustang still smelled like the lot, like treated leather and what he imagined were carcinogens. He had heaped the interior with dirty saddle pads and fly sheets in vain, trying to make the new car smell like the comforting familiar, to no avail.

He rolled the windows down to let the breeze come off the hay fields and through his hair as he drove, perhaps a little too quickly, around the first bend with a frustrated tap on the gas.

He slowed and let the car crawl over the first hill, then pick up momentum down the natural incline. One hand on the wheel, one eye on the woods to his right looking out for deer, he didn’t have much excuse not to answer when his phone rang again. He was going to have to bite that bullet eventually.

He pushed the talk button on his steering wheel.

“Hey,” he said.

“Eight appointments?” Reagan got right to the point. “That’s two months of appointments. Where the hell have you been going?”

“The barn,” he said. “You can ask Michael.”

“Michael’s not a psychiatrist, and he’s not your babysitter. Why would you put him in that position?”

“He doesn’t know,” said Astrid hastily, then, even more hastily, “Don’t tell him, okay?”

“What, you’re asking for favors now?” He heard her blow an angry breath out through her nose. “So you don’t tell me, you don’t tell Michael. Why don’t you _talk_ to us, Astrid?”

_I talk to the horses,_ he thought, and didn’t say. Every horse in the barn knew the sob story— and as far as he knew, they hadn’t told a soul. That made them pretty good confidants in his book. Better than most people.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Did something happen?” she asked. “Why did you stop going?”

“No, nothing happened, I just—” He fell short of finishing his sentence.

He heard her sigh, heard the anger go out of her, replaced by the ever present worry that stuck to him like a wet blanket.

“It’s okay,” she said. “We’ll figure it out. How was the barn? Did you ride?”

“Uh huh,” he lied.

_WHUMP._

He saw the flash of something too late, something too rapidly moving to identify as it raced out in front of his car, only half a second before his bumper impacted it. He yelped and braked. Throwing his car in park, he sat for a moment in breathless shock, then found himself saying, “I’m fine, I’m fine!” on instinct. “Think I hit a god damn deer. Holy fuck.”

“Shit. Is it dead?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t going that fast.” That thump though. “I wonder if it fucked up my bumper.”

“You’ve had that thing three months. Dad is going to kill you.”

He smiled.

“I’m driving out there,” she said.

“Nope, don’t.” He imagined Michael’s face for a second time, and this time, it wasn’t so funny. “I’m fine, I’m going to check it out. I’ll get Michael if I need him, and if I need you, I’ll call you back.”

Silence.

“I _will_,” he said.

“If I don’t hear from you in an hour, I’m going to undo all your bridles and put them together backwards.”

“If you do, I’m going to rip off all your bumper stickers. And also kill you.”

“Call me back,” she said flatly, and hung up.

Astrid let out his breath in one long, slow exhale.

He couldn’t hear movement or see it in his headlights. Did that mean he had killed it, or it had run away?

“Fuck,” he said.

Leaving the engine running and the lights on, he got out of his car.

The road beyond the lights was pitch black by now, as was the pasture to his left, and the forest to his right, on the other side of the road.

He rounded the side of his car warily.

“Oh, fuck.”

He hadn’t hit a deer

#

The bitter yellow sand ground in Dog’s gritted teeth.

He started to rise, but the boot landed between his shoulder blades and shoved him back down, and this time it stayed there, bearing its owner’s full weight on him.

“Don’t get up again,” said his brother.

Dog turned his face from the ground, spat dirt, and laughed. The heat of the sand rose up all around him, stinging through his clothes; his wrists burned, too, from the rope, from the last several hours on horseback grinding his skin raw.

“Why not kill me here?” he suggested. “Pierce my heart through my back. It’s the only chance you’ll get.”

“Shut up,” said his brother. “You think I’d do you the favor of a swift death?”

The boot inched up his spine and twisted.

From where he lay, bound and stepped on, all Dog could see were the legs of horses. He saw only two sets — his, and his brother’s — but then heard the sound of another rider approaching, saw a fresh set of hooves slide to a stop and the white boots of the rider as they leapt down from the water.

“What’s going on?” came the voice of Dog’s younger brother. _Bug._ Dog watched the tip of his little brother’s sword, black with blood, dripping in the sand. _He had to fight his way here. We must be... _

“Ask him yourself.”

The boot lifted, and Dog struggled up to his knees, where he saw for the first time where they were and burst out laughing.

The three of them stood (and knelt) at the edge of an abyss of yellow sand, bounded very far away by two black mountains, and just ahead, by an impassive wall of black stone. Beyond it, three towers climbed, their windows and platforms hidden behind black screens chained tight against the desert wind. Through the screens Dog could see the dozens of faces looking down, the flashes of imperial gold, and he laughed harder, and whooped at them, and even began to howl like his namesake before his older brother struck him across the face.

“Be silent!” he snapped. His riding knot had come undone, his dark hair unbound around his shoulders, whipping around his face, his face a storm behind it. His lips were hard-bitten, wind-chapped and bleeding. “Do you want your lips sewn together again? I’ll do it myself!”

He raised his hand to strike Dog again, but Bug seized his wrist.

“What is his crime?”

Bug, somehow still neat despite his apparent clash with outriders, still wore youth and fear openly on his face. A head shorter than their older brother, he still restrained him, perhaps adding a touch of scared magic to his strength.

Dog tried to spit, but his mouth was too dry, too full of sand, and all he managed to spit was a thick glob of blood, which the wind splattered right back down his chin.

“Speak your crime,” ordered his older brother, wresting his wrist free. “Speak it here, now, to the very gates you’ve been betrayed.”

“Didn’t you just tell me to be silent?” asked Dog. “Which is it, Kitty? Shall I be silent, or shall I speak my crimes?”

Kitty seized the whip off his horse’s saddle and lashed Dog across the shoulders. The whip split his clothes like a blade and bit deep, so sharp he almost didn’t feel it until he felt the blood running down his shoulders.

He looked down, watched it drop into the sand.

“_Speak,_” ordered his brother.

Bug looked on with expectant, worried eyes — Dog met them, acknowledged the fear there, then shrugged.

The lash fell again, with more rage in it. He felt this blow stutter through his entire chest, felt the heat of the sun touch his back as his split clothes gapped. It beat the breath out of him, and the next inhale was a struggle.

He looked at the horses, standing in silent witness, their black eyes on him as if they, too, awaited his confession.

“Heartless— lying—”

His brother punctuated each word with a landing of the whip.

“Evil— ambitious—”

Bug finally seized the lash, ripping it from Kitty’s hand. Blood squeezed from between his fingers like a sponge. He looked at the blood, looked at the gates in dawning realization, and then, looking down, he asked Dog:

“Did you really do it?”

Dog glanced at the sun, wavering on the tips of the towers like an imperial disc.

The grit in his teeth was bitter. Bitter.

“It’s true,” he said. He smiled, a smile full of blood. “Are you really so surprised— Bug? Kitty?”

Bug looked away, wiping his palm on the white of his tucked tunic, wiping away Dog’s blood and looking blankly at the black doors.

“You’re a fool,” said Dog, almost gently. “You’re all fools— father most of all, too tender to cull his get—”

Kitty slapped him across the face with an open hand.

“You be silent,” he said, this time no longer raging, but expressionless, empty behind the eyes. He lifted a hand, making a purple mark in the air, and sending it flying towards the doors.

Dog smiled at his blood in the dirt.

The black doors responded to Kitty’s sigil, swinging outward and sending the wafting breath of an oasis to them, and the trickling sound of the water gardens.

Kitty dragged Dog up to his feet and shoved him to walk ahead, and walk he did, on staggering feet into the lush yard of the Court of Towermark.

Bug led the horses.

The gardens passed like a mirage, through a haze of blood loss and sun-submission, and the wild smile on Dog’s face didn’t fade, only grew more dazzling in the memory and comfort of home. He passed under the monumental statues of his forebears, iron wrought with gold, the hooves of the statuary horses rubbed to a high shine by several generations worth of hands reaching to touch them for good luck. The path of white stone, perfectly leveled, reflected a version of his own face back at him, turned pearly and ambiguous with blood. The artificial river, made by the Sixth Sovereign for a beloved consort, flickering with real living fish, led him past the different offshoots of courtyards, gardens, past the soft domed quarters of childhood, and up to the base of the towers themselves.

The whole walk, he felt the eyes of his people skinning him alive.

His smile never wavered.

At the foot of the tower, the sun finally fell behind them, and cold shadow eclipsed Dog.

The open doorway to his father’s seat of power was black as a void.

“Go on,” said Kitty.

Dog spared a glance behind him. Beyond his brothers, the silent crowd turned into a singular, familiar mass of resentment— no, now it had a new, unfamiliar color. One of hate. And of expectation, and belief confirmed.

He sneered at that same confirmation on Kitty’s face.

“I said go on,” snarled his brother.

“Of course, brother, but... your hair is a horrible mess. Are you sure you want to face Father like this?”

Kitty seized him by the hair, balling it up in his fist and dragging him into the hall.

Bug, having handed off the horses, hurried in behind them, pressing his own sigil into the doors to shut and seal after they had passed. All light from outside was shuttered, leaving nothing but the low blue embers of the pit that surrounded the seat itself.

Quietly, lanterns were lit, revealing a circuit of familiar faces in the round room, brothers and sisters sitting on their tiers, advisors, court tacticians, and valued equites on theirs. Dog eyed his siblings; they were all in attendance, from the eldest, Fly, to the youngest, Frog— a girl not even old enough yet to sit a horse. Her face was as somber as the rest.

In the slowly growing light, their eyes gleamed like copper coins, like the eyes of dogs circling the edge of a fire. Waiting.

Kitty threw him down at the edge of the pit, stepped back, and knelt.

“Father,” he said.

The blue embers grew, like flowers blooming at the base of the coarse throne, until they were rippling about the throned man’s feet. He didn’t stir, didn’t seem to feel their touch, though the smell of singed leather filled the air. He wore no finery, no jewelry, only a simple tunic and tucked riding skirt in crisp white, and a loose black coat of light and wafting material. His hair was loose, falling nearly to the end of the throne at its fullest point, his beard cut. He did not loom; he held himself with the simple, gentle posture of a man who rode many horses. But his fingers were curled and rigid as if clamped on the reins of a plunging steed.

The Eighth Sovereign of the Court of Towermark looked across the low flames at his whipped son.

Dog smiled back at him.

“Hello, Father,” he said.

“Cut his bonds,” said the Sovereign.

Kitty hastened to do so, nicking Dog’s palm with the blade in his speed, so Dog flinched twice, grimacing as he brought his freed hands out in front of himself. He sucked the blood from the fresh cut, dismissing the burning friction wounds on his wrists.

“What have you done with her?” asked the Sovereign.

Dog reached up to fix his hair, running his fingers through the knots and tucking them casually behind his ears. He turned on his knees to inspect each face in the room, landing last on Fly, that brother’s face full of some manner of idiot empathy.

Turning back to his father, he innocently spread his hands.

“Done with who, Father?”

Dog heard Kitty move to strike him but did not flinch, smiling when their father’s raised hand halted the blow. A cool blue sigil glowed on his upraised palm.

The Sovereign did not raise his voice when he asked, “Where is Swan Teeth?”

Silence in the room, no sound but the distant wind, and ripple of the artificial river, so distant Dog might have been imagining them.

He looked at the faces around him once more, as if pretending to look for Swan Teeth among them. He saw Bug’s growing despair, his younger brother’s fingers curling in his bloodied shirt, and the hot rage on Kitty’s face, and the deep, forehead-puckering question on Fly’s.

“Ah!” said Dog, as if in sudden memory, turning around with a pointed finger. “Swan Teeth!”

Silence beat once.

Twice.

“She’s dead,” he said. “I slit her throat and crocodiles ate her.”

The uproar began before the words had even left his mouth; all around him, his siblings and the known faces of the court rose up in a great cry of rage.

He smiled among the screaming.

At once his father stood before him— no longer on his throne, but on the ledge against the blue coals, looking down at his kneeling son. Under the heat of rage, the cool-headed Sovereign was silent. Breaking down his son and his expectation in his black-rimmed eye.

“Isn’t this what you wanted, Father?” Dog asked. “A son that you could hate?”

“Do you know what you have done?” marveled his father. “You _creature_?”

“I have done my duty,” said Dog.

“You are as mad as they named you,” said the Sovereign, and his words were a dismissal. He turned away. Dog burst out laughing, and he was still laughing, wildly, unresisting, as his brothers seized him and dragged him back out the opening doors into the light.

He could no longer see the sun, but he could see it setting in the stain-red of the sky, and the cold air of death on his split shoulders.

“Open the well,” ordered Kitty.

They drew the curtain down from the central well in a grand sweep of black cloth, revealing a perfect unclad circle of gray stone, and a drop off to nothing, to a blackness that Dog thought was, surely, a match for him.

Again, the horses stood near bearing witness. He felt the weight of their eyes more than that of his own people.

His brother shoved him down again next to the abyss.

“Are you going to be the one to throw me in, Kitty?” Dog asked, nearly serious. “Are you sure you want the memory of my fate? You’ll suffer it in dreams, you know.”

“You’ll suffer worse than I.” Kitty shoved his head down, forcing Dog to stare into the slow death of inky tar below him.

“You can’t do this.”

A single protesting voice.

Dog managed to look up— brother Fly stood on the other side of the well, shawl wrapped around his own shoulders, hair neat, face somber.

“He is to be pitied,” said Fly. “Pitied, not condemned. He knows not what he does.”

“If you think he does not know, then he has made a fool of you, as much as he has damned us all,” spat Kitty.

One final shove.

One final foot between the shoulder blades.

And Dog was thrown to his doom— towards the abyss of punishing black and hungry magic. He closed his eyes—

\--and they snapped open staring up at a brilliant, star-spackled night sky.

He bolted upright in dense and unfamiliar forest. He flinched instinctively, expecting the pain of his wounds, but... nothing. Slowly he reached up to feel his whipped shoulders; the cloth was still torn, still wet with blood, but the wounds themselves were somehow healed.

Inspecting himself all over, Dog could find no signs of the beating he’d received.

_How?_ he wondered.

He looked around at the trees.

_Is this Hell?_

Listening, he heard the hoot of an owl, and not much else.

Suspicious, Dog moved through the forest looking for any sign of the familiar in the moonlight. Every sight, every smell was strange to him. No, he decided. He had never been here before.

The yip of a strange creature had him ducking immediately into the brush— suddenly, the loudest them to him was his own heartbeat, as the yip was joined by others.

The cackling of wild dogs came from all around him.

_I am in Hell._

He bolted blind through the brush.

Branches caught in his hair and he ripped free; they lashed his face, and he kept running.

He nearly crippled himself on the fence when he struck it, running so fear-blind that the suddenness of post and board threw him to the dirt. He spared only a moment of vicious swearing for his knee, then swung up and over the structure. A thought half formed in his head — if there was a fence, that meant someone had built it — was demolished by a sudden burst of light, washing over and blinding him. He threw his arms up against the light. Then something huge, hard as falling on rock, slammed into him, sending him hurtling and winded into the dark.

Starlight winked out overhead.

#

“Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.”

Astrid stared down at the figure of the _human person he had hit with his car_, mouth slightly open, filling up with the taste of horror and more “Oh, fuck.”

He took a step closer before thinking and saying to himself, “What the fuck are they doing out here?” He stopped, and said louder, “Hey, are you all right?”

The figure stirred. He thought ‘Oh, thank fuck’ they weren’t dead, and then ‘holy fuck’ he was getting sued, and again, almost in anger, ‘what the _fuck_’ were they doing out there anyway?

He got close enough to bend down and reached out. He hesitated — some instinct in him recognizing something alien, something not quite right — before shaking their shoulder. “Hey—”

He didn’t get to finish his sentence; the figure shot up, seizing his wrist and holding it away from them. In the light of his Mustang’s headlights he saw it was a man. Well— man, boy, guy, he looked about Astrid’s age. College dropout years old. His hair was very long, dark, and tangled, full of knots and bits of sticks. He had high cheekbones, a wide mouth, a feral expression, and two brilliant, copper-colored eyes, flashing in the dark. Like coins. Like the light of animals’ eyes, seen waiting on the fringe of a fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Car wash at the custom tent,_   
_sticky quarters and pine tree scent._   
_The only sign that we ever got stuck_   
_is the muddy chain in the back of the truck_


	2. consider that tetanus shot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _If you'll be my Louisiana,_   
_I'll be your Mississippi._   
_You'll be my Little Loretta_   
_I'll be your Conway Twitty_

“Are you okay?”

Looking the stranger over, Astrid’s heart dropped to see that his clothes were bloody and torn. But that was strange…

He realized, with a flicker of unease, that the blood was dry.

“What the hell happened to you?”

Those copper eyes indicated no understanding. They darted over Astrid with the same kind of hard scrutiny. Astrid tried to pull back his hand, but the grip on his wrist only tightened.

“Can I have my hand back?” he demanded.

The man responded with rapidfire speech that was utterly incomprehensible. It wasn’t English, Astrid knew that for sure, but he had no clue what it _was_; it didn’t quite sound like any language he’d ever heard.

“Sorry, dude,” he said. “I have no idea what you’re saying.” A second later it occurred to him, “Oh. I guess you don’t understand me, either.”

The stranger pulled himself up, only to release Astrid and seize his own knee with a barrage of what had to be profanity.

Astrid saw fresh blood for the first time.

“Oh, shit.”

What the fuck was he supposed to do?

Call Reagan?

‘Hey sis can you drive up here after all? I hit a guy with my car. Yeah, it wasn’t a deer! Crazy.’

No.

The old tack room, he realized.

Not fifty feet away, the glorified shack sat empty of all but the oldest and mealiest forgotten saddles, virtually abandoned after the extension of the main barn.

He was sure there was still a first aid kit in there.

“Here.” He offered the stranger his hand in what he hoped was the universal gesture for ‘let me help you’.

The stranger eyed him the same way Lacey eyed the moving equipment parked by the outdoor arena.

Astrid waited the same way he waited for Lacey — with patience, but with his heart beating a little too hard in apprehension, thinking a little too hard about what could go wrong. And the stranger reached up and took his hand.

His fingers were ridged with strange calluses.

Astrid hauled him to his feet; a feat he wouldn’t have been capable of at the beginning of the year, before a summer spent loading and unloading hay and grain and putting up bales. The strange man was well over six feet tall, but fortunately, not too wide. Astrid pulled his arm over his shoulder, counted _one, two, three,_ and hefted the stranger up.

They began the slow, awkward three legged waddle out of the lights of his car and towards the outline of the old tack room.

The stranger didn’t speak again, but Astrid could hear his breath and feel his hair falling over his shoulder. Something about the way he smelled was strangely familiar. The source eluded Astrid until they reached the edge of the tack room’s sensor and the light flickered on, revealing two equine heads poking curiously over the pasture fence.

The man, Astrid realized, smelled like horses.

Astrid felt him brake at the sight of the horses, and he said, “That’s just Butter and Sunset. They’re chill,” in a voice he hoped communicated enough in tone.

He had to dig in his pocket to see if he still even had the key for the old tack room, fumble the key in, and shove the door open with six plus feet of an injured random man slumped over his shoulder. Thankfully, there was a hay bale directly inside the door. He unloaded the stranger and went searching for a light and a first aid kit.

He found the first aid kit immediately, by tripping over it, and it was his turn to swear loudly.

The string for the light tickled his nose and he jerked it angrily.

He turned around for his first good look at the stranger, and found the stranger already looking intently at him. His copper eyes had narrowed into slits against the influx of light, but the color still glinted eerily between his eyelids.

There was something eerily angular about his face, not exactly ‘vampire’ but not far off in vibe, somehow threatening yet poised. He had distinct, dark eyebrows, and eyelashes long enough to shutter his eyes and make his expression even more oblique, his gaze even more uncomfortable to bear.

He had long hair— very long hair. It looked like it had come undone from some kind of complicated braid and whipped into wind knots, like a horse left for too long at pasture. His clothes, stained and ripped, were still recognizable as totally unrecognizable to Astrid. The man wore a long tunic, sleeveless, tattered and hanging on to his shoulder by threads, sashed with a belt, and long, loose pants like a split skirt, with half wrapped around each leg. They were laced up the outside from calf to hip.

His boots were unmistakably riding boots.

The leather of the boots matched the leather of his belt — dark, pliable, lightly scored in ornate patterns. And tipped with gold.

The garments must have been white before they had been through the mill of blood, dirt, what looked like ash, and a whole mess of branches. Also being hit by a car.

The fresh blood on the knee drew Astrid’s attention.

He pointed at the knee. “Are you going to kick me in the face if I try to look at that?”

No response from his guest, only an ominous silence, and that steady, enigmatic glower.

“Okay, well, I’m gonna do it anyway,” said Astrid.

He had gotten good at dodging kicks to the face, after Lacey got an infected cut on her left hind and developed some strong opinions about him treating it.

He knelt down in front of the stranger, keeping an eye on him out of the corner of his vision as he unpacked the contents of the kit. Scissors, betadine, blu-kote, hoof pick, another hoof pick…

“Oh, here.” He pulled out the bottle of saline solution, sat back on his heels, and gave the stranger another wary look — one that the stranger matched. Astrid reached up to hold his hand over the bloody cloth and said, “I’m going to clean it out, okay? Do not kick me. Or murder me.”

The guy didn’t even blink. Astrid felt like he was face to face with Big Iron. The man and the horse had the same patient, vaguely malignant vibe.

“Okay, fuck it,” he said, lifting the edge of the torn cloth, and wincing. “Oh, man. I hope you’re up to date on your tetanus shots. You probably aren’t, are you?”

The cuts weren’t deep, but they were grimy as fuck.

“Okay, fuck it,” he said again. He picked up the scissors. Immediately, he sensed — rather than saw, or felt — a ripple in the man under his hands. He looked up.

The stranger looked at him with baleful eyes and spoke again; while the words were still incomprehensible, Astrid was sure the meaning was something like ‘Try me, motherfucker’.

“You think my 5’ 6” ass is going to kill you with these dull-ass scissors?” Astrid asked him, matching tone. “If I wanted to fuck you up, I would have gotten back in my car and run you over. Chill the hell out.”

He met the stranger’s copper glare until the tension ebbed by about half a breath. But it was something. He lifted the scissors and felt the stranger’s muscles flex dangerously under his hand, but the stranger didn’t move, remaining as still and silent as a stone while Astrid cut fabric away from the wound.

Cloth out of the way, Astrid reached for the squirt bottle of saline solution. Eyeing the statuesque figure, he wondered how well he would take the rest of this. That flat, threatening expression never wavered, never left Astrid’s face.

“Do you blink?” demanded Astrid.

No reply.

And no— he didn’t blink.

It occurred to Astrid only then what he was doing. He was alone— with a strange, insane-looking man who had come running out of the woods, a man with possibly a full foot on him and arms like an MMA fighter. In essentially the middle of nowhere. With no one knowing exactly where he was or what was going on.

But it was the same kind of realization you had when your horse was approaching a bank and you noticed you’d left out a wholeass stride, and the only thing to do was slip your reins and hope for the best.

He snapped on a pair of latex gloves and began to flush out the wound.

It must have been painful, especially when he picked out the few bigger pieces of debris, but the stranger didn’t move— he barely seemed to breathe, he was so still. Until Astrid finished.

Astrid snapped off the gloves, tossed them aside, and picked up the can of scarlet oil spray and gave it a shake. He lowered the nozzle to the stranger’s knee.

The second the spray hissed, the man reacted just like any spooky horse getting fly sprayed: by kicking Astrid square in the chest, throwing him on his back and scattering the contents of the first aid kit.

“Son of a bitch,” swore Astrid, and kept swearing, digging a spare treat out of his back. “And motherfucker. Motherfucker, what the fuck? _Fuck!_” He flung the treat across the room. He sat up and pointed at the stranger, who sat once again expressionless and unreadable. “You— look here. Look.” He got up, grabbed the spray, and, holding it in front of the stranger’s face, sprayed his own hand. He waved his red palm in the man’s face. “It’s fine. See?”

No change in expression, but the man did look at Astrid’s unharmed hand.

Still irate, but somehow also reassured — if the worst the man was going to do was kick him, there probably wasn’t going to be a murder — Astrid knelt down in front of him again. He held the spray above the knee, nozzle pointed at the wound, and gave the stranger eye for eye. Glare for glare.

When he depressed the button, and the spray hissed out again, the stranger twitched once, but didn’t move, and this time, didn’t kick him in the chest.

A drop of the scarlet oil ran down his knee and dripped on the concrete floor.

That finished, Astrid grabbed the sterile gauze and wrapped the knee, finished up with some vet wrap. Pink zebra print. The stranger didn’t protest this part of the process.

“There.” Astrid sat back on his heels. “I’d still consider that tetanus shot, though.”

_Now what?_

Astrid barely had time to think the words.

The stranger saved him coming up with an answer by leaning forward, reaching out, and taking his face in his hands. Astrid jerked — and his mind went blank. For a second, absolutely nothing happened. And then the stranger released him.

“I will not forget this kindness,” said the stranger. He still spoke in his foreign tongue, but somehow, this time, Astrid understood it. “When I make complete my vengeance, yours will be the only blood I don’t spill.”

“Oh, what the fuck.”

The stranger finally broke his stare. Getting up, he tested his weight on his injured leg, and hobbled over to look out the window. He peered intently into the dark. “Tell me, physician… where am I?”

“You’re— physician?” Astrid still sat on his heels, pink zebra print vet wrap in hand, touching his cheek where the strange man had touched it.

“I thought I had been sent to Hell,” mused the stranger. “But then I saw the horses. I know there are no horses in Hell. So what is this place?”

Astrid kept blinking rapidly, brain clicking along, trying and failing to catch up.

“My brother must have sent me here,” the man muttered, then spat on the floor. “To think that we grew from the same seed— not only that, but I shared a womb with him! Well. He will die slowly.”

Astrid found he had exactly no fucking words.

Suddenly the man turned, seizing Astrid by the forearm and pulling him up, reestablishing that intense eye contact. “I asked, and you didn’t answer, physician,” he said, with the light snarl of someone used to being answered quickly. “Where am I?”

“I’m not a physician,” said Astrid, trying to peel the fingers off his arm. “I— wait a second.” He realized something about the man’s changed expression. “Can you understand me?”

“It’s a simple connection spell,” said the stranger dismissively, not releasing him. “That’s the third time I’ve asked you a question and received no answer. I don’t take well to being ignored—”

Astrid reached down and squeezed his leg, just above the injured knee; the man yelped like a spanked dog and let go. In the spray of profanity that followed — none of which was apparently literally translatable, because Astrid got none of it — he lost some of his vampiric composure.

“I’m not a physician. I’m using to bubble wrapping my idiot horse, so I know how to dress a cut knee. You probably still need to go to the hospital, because you need a tetanus shot, and your head checked, because you’re batshit crazy— especially if you think you’re going to order me around when I’m already having a super shit day.”

Not cowed, but confused, the stranger stared at him. He looked baffled behind those long eyelashes.

“My name is Astrid.”

The stranger tested his leg again, straightened up, and inclined his head in what was nearly a bow. “My name is Waterscared Dog— six year champion of the Crocodile races, builder of pyres for wild dogs, son of the Eighth Sovereign of the Court of Towermark. I have been exiled from my homeland, betrayed by my own blood… and I will have my revenge.”

“Awesome. Great.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shoutout to clickercake & thewonderingdani for this chapter's horse names


	3. do not stick your arm out the window

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I know I'm gonna see you first thing tomorrow,_   
_but I just couldn't wait so I had to borrow_   
_Uncle Jake's Mustang, its his favorite car_   
_and so I can't stay long_

“So do you have a nickname? Or is it just the whole thing. The whole something Dog, something about races, son of so-and-so?

“Waterscared Dog, six-year champion of the Crocodile Races, builder of pyres for wild dogs, son of the Eighth Sovereign of the Court of Towermark.”

“Yeah, okay. Do you have a shorter version of that?”

The stranger’s eyes narrowed.

“What was the first bit?” Astrid tried again. “Waterscared Dog? Like… rabies?”

He thought he saw the stranger’s face flush. Was he pissed off?

“Dog is all right,” said the stranger shortly, turning his enigmatic back. “What is ‘Astrid’? I’ve never heard of a name like that.”

“Uh.” Astrid scratched his nose. “It’s, um. Well, it’s a girl’s name— my parents thought I was going to be a girl, and when I was born they were like ‘fuck it’, I guess. It means beautiful. Something like that.”

“A strange name,” remarked fucking ‘Waterscared Dog’ from the window.

“Okay, Rabies.”

Astrid walked up next to Dog and pointed at the lights of the main house and the shadow of the barn. “That’s Idyll Hour Stables. Michael Shook owns it, and if he finds out that I hit a stranger with my car, on his property, he is going to kill me.”

“If anyone tries to harm you, Beautiful Astrid—”

“Nope.”

“—I will feed them a hideous death. I am honorable; I won’t forget the life-debt owed.” Dog reached for his belt in an unmistakable reaching-for-a-sword gesture; he frowned when his hand found nothing but air.

Astrid pushed the fallen scissors out of view behind the hay bale.

“It’s a figure of speech,” he said. “I mean that he’ll be angry.”

“Why should we care if this Michael is angry?” Dog asked Astrid, who wanted to know where the fuck this ‘we’ was coming from. “We can do as we please. No one commands the son of a Sovereign nor his companions. You chose well to aid me, Astrid. Your life will be eased and your way made safe by my sword.”

“You know _I_ hit you with my car, right?”

Dog turned and frowned down at him. “‘Car’,” he repeated. Something of the translation eluded him, even with the spell.

“Yes, car. What do you think you ran into?”

Dog blinked. “A wall of iron, full of light. A… a… a lantern.”

“Serious question: are you a little bit stupid?”

Dog’s eyes flashed. He loomed over Astrid; it wasn’t hard to do, given their extreme height difference. “Be careful of your words. You haven’t seen the true extent of my power. You should know to fear me—”

“Oh, _shit_,” said Astrid. “That reminds me, I have to call my sister. Be right back.”

He ducked out the door and ran for his car. He heard Dog shouting after him: “Physician! ...Astrid! ...where are you going?”

Astrid booked it the fifty feet back to his car, still sitting with the lights on and engine running. He threw himself in the front seat and grabbed his phone. Reagan picked up on the first ring.

He cut her off before she could say anything. “Hey, sorry, sorry. It’s fine. I’m fine. The deer was fine. It ran off.”

“It took you that long to check and see if there was a deer or not?”

“No— well, see, that new guy left the back gate open, and I had to catch Butter and put him back. That’s all.”

“New guy?”

“Yeah, started like two weeks ago.” Glancing through the windshield, he saw Dog limp out of the shed, pant leg flapping. He turned left and right, scanning for Astrid.

“Sounds like he’s not going to be there much longer.”

“Yeah, Michael already hates him.” Astrid flashed his brights once. Dog turned and shaded his eyes up towards the car, and something occurred to Astrid. “Actually, uh— he’s not that bad. He’s just not from around here. He’s studying abroad.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Really bad English.”

“How come you haven’t mentioned him before?”

“Well, like I said, he’s new.”

“Uh huh.” Reagan’s voice developed a certain amused suspicion. “Is he cute?”

Astrid watched Dog pick up a pitchfork leaned against the side of the shed and inspect it as if trying to decide if it could be used as a weapon. Butter and Sunset watched over the fence with pricked ears.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “Big time.”

“Is that why you’ve been skipping out of therapy? Secret boyfriend?”

“Jesus, Reagan.”

“What? I can’t hope my baby brother is sneaky dating instead of just crying into his horse’s mane three days a week? Did you get his number?”

“I’m hanging up now.”

“If I don’t see you in thirty minutes, I’m calling the cops. Byeeeee.”

He hung up and leaned out of the car. “Dog!”

“Astrid, something is terribly wrong,” Dog called back, making his way up towards the car using the fork as a crutch. Astrid went to help. Totally unprompted, Dog ditched the fork and threw his arm around Astrid’s shoulder, dropping his whole weight on him once more.

“My powers,” said Dog, holding up his palm. Green sparks leapt from his thumb to his forefinger. “They’ve been drained.”

“What’s supposed to be happening right now?” asked Astrid from under his arm, blowing a bit of Dog’s long hair out of his face.

“A ball of flame.”

Astrid was glad it wasn’t working.

Dog spat angrily on the ground. _Gross._ “I must have used the final dregs to forge our communication,” said Dog. “Very well. You shall have to help me restore it.”

“I’ll think about it,” said Astrid. As they approached the lights of his car, he noticed for the first time the pale scars that manacled Dog’s wrists. They looked old… but not too old. He bit his tongue and didn’t ask.

They reached his car, and Astrid let Dog’s weight slide off onto the hood, where he stopped to consider his options, frowning off into the dark woods where the stranger had come from in the first place.

Option one… take him to the ER?

Astrid had a vivid mental image of Dog stabbing the first nurse who came near him with a needle. 

Hide him somewhere?

He had another mental image, this time of Michael finding a strange man stowed in his tack room. In that scenario, Astrid wasn’t as worried about Michael as he was about Michael’s shotgun.

How fucked up was it that the best case scenario was his sister finding a strange man hidden under his bed?

“Do you have any other injuries?” he asked. “Or is it just the knee?”

Dog touched his own shoulder in a gesture so instant it must have been involuntary. His expression clouded, and he shook his head.

Astrid wondered again about the dried blood. Now, he thought he could see other old scars, the same color as the ones on his wrists, dappling Dog’s shoulders in the ambiguous light, under his ragged tunic.

“Where is shelter, Astrid?” asked Dog. “It’s not wise to be abroad at night. I heard dogs, earlier.”

Astrid wondered if he was talking about the coyotes, or the half-deaf, half-blind great pyrenees that tried to chase his car every time Astrid took a shortcut past the sheep field.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “You can crash at my place— but there are _rules_. Can you handle that?”

Dog scoffed. “You think I am so low, I would disrespect the wishes of my host and savior?”

“I don’t know how many times I have to tell you, I did not save you, _I_ hit you with my car.”

“Ah, the ‘car’.” Dog spread his fingers on the smooth metal of the hood. “Not a lantern after all. It’s growling… moving under my hands. Is it alive?”

“No, it’s just a hunk of metal.” He gave one of the tires a dispirited kick. “It takes you places. Do you have… Where you come from, were there carts? Carriages?”

“Caravans?”

“Sure. It’s like that. Just no horses pulling it.”

“I see. How does it work?”

Astrid sighed. “Get in.”

Wedging all six feet and however many inches plus of Waterscared Dog, champion of something, builder of whatever, son of the Eighth Some Fucking Guy, into the passenger seat was exactly as difficult as Astrid expected it to be.

He had to push the seat all the way back room to make space for Dog’s legs, then smack his hand away from the buttons when Dog immediately became fascinated with adjusting his seat.

Astrid didn’t bother with the seatbelt. If they crashed and Dog flew through the windshield, honestly, it was one less thing for him to worry about.

When he shut the door on him, Dog immediately seized the inside handle with suspicion.

“Relax,” said Astrid. Taking a chance on Dog not climbing out through the window, Astrid went around to his side. No sooner had he settled into his own seat that he looked over and saw Dog smelling an empty Starbucks cup left from that morning. He seemed mesmerized.

“That’s trash,” said Astrid, taking the cup and tossing it into the back seat.

“And this?” Dog held up a bent hoof pick. “A weapon?” He sounded hopeful.

“Also trash. Give it here.”

Dog gave it up and immediately went back to rifling. “Where is your weapon, Astrid? Are you out here in the dog-infested dark unarmed?”

“Please stop touching my stuff.”

“You are either very courageous or very foolhardy, Astrid,” said Dog, turning a crushed can of Diet Coke over in his hands.

“I’m going to roll the windows up now. Do not stick your arms out.”

Dog watched the pane of glass slide up into place with less alarm than Astrid had expected. “What a strange machine,” he said. “You will teach me to operate it.”

Astrid activated the child locks. “I can’t,” he said. “It’s coded magically to my blood. Only I can drive it.”

“Ah, I see,” said Dog. “Not only a healer, but you have this power, too. No wonder you wander the darkness so freely.”

“Yep, I’m pretty impressive. So about the house…” He tapped gently on the gas, hoping not to disturb his guest, who only looked out the window with mild interest as they began to roll past the tree. Astrid suspected he wouldn’t be as blasé when they were going 75 down the highway. As he went around the loop of the back pasture, and turned back towards the main building, something occurred to him. “The location of my home is a secret,” he said. “Not divulged to outsiders. So you’ll have to—”

“Blindfold myself,” Dog supplied immediately. “Or your domestic ghosts will tear my eyes from my head, lest I reveal your location to your enemies.”

“Yeah. Yeah, exactly.”

“I have been a guest at the Towers of Aegmen, at the floating court of the Bloodponds,” said Dog haughtily. “The etiquette was drilled into me before I could walk.” He grabbed a mane sleezy out of the back seat and pulled it over his head. “Will this suffice?”

Astrid pressed his lips together, hard, to keep from laughing. “Mm hm.”

They drove past the house; he saw Michael’s outline in the light of the window, and hoped he couldn’t see beyond Astrid’s headlights to the other person in the passenger seat. As they pulled away down the drive, he looked in the rearview and saw the light flick off.

_Safe._

One obstacle down out of the myriad of obstacles ahead of them. And at the end of them lay the big question Astrid was going to have to address, which boiled down to… what the fuck was going on?

He couldn’t deny the taste of magic that lingered on his tongue when he spoke to Dog, or the green sparks he’d seen dance on his callused palm. The idea of magic didn’t bother Astrid as much as the dried blood, the scars, and those eyes — there was something about them. Something not quite human. Something he wouldn’t go so far as to call ‘feral’, but something operating under a different code of natural law than him. He thought he had sensed that kind of difference before in horses, like the difference between Lacey and Big Iron. It wasn’t the difference between placid and spooky… it felt something more like the difference between flight and fight.

He was glad Dog was blindfolded; he thought Dog would react to the sight of the rushing highway about as well as Iron did to the sight of clippers.

“So uh… where did you say you were from again?”

“My father reigns from the twin black towers to the river of death itself. I am from any oasis in between, any spot where I choose to sleep, where I picket my horse, or spill blood,” said Dog, voice muffled through the sleezy.

“Cool, cool,” said Astrid, changing lanes. “Whose blood?”

“The blood of the enemy, Astrid,” said Dog, with a note of pitying exasperation in his voice, as if it should have been obvious.

“Oh, sure. The enemy. Got it.”

“Tell me of your home, Astrid. Not its secrets, but what kind of a place is it?”

“Well, it’s a college town. Pretty diverse. My sister and I live more on the edge of it, away from the action.”

Which was a bigass plus right now. He couldn’t imagine taking this guy into the light and noise of downtown.

They zipped past an unrecognizable flash of roadkill, and he saw Dog’s head turn under the sleezy.

“It smells of death.”

“Yeah, someone hit a skunk, I think.”

“If you are leading me into a trap, know that even your physician’s arts won’t save you.”

“No worries. I wasn’t planning on it.”

“If my brother could send me here,” murmured Dog, seemingly thinking aloud. “Perhaps I am not the only thing he was able to send. Or the only one. I will have to be wary.”

“Well, you can trust me not to tell anyone,” said Astrid. “I don’t have anyone to tell. My friends all moved away like, a year ago. It’s just me and my sister now. And sometimes her girlfriend.”

“Only one sister?” That got Dog’s interest. His head turned towards Astrid under the sleezy.

“Yeah, just the two of us.”

“Two children? Is there something wrong with your father?”

“Not fertility-wise, if that’s what you’re asking, and please don’t. He and my mom split up a while ago — not legally. They just live in different hemispheres now.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Yeah, me neither.”

Astrid took his exit and started plotting. An idea came to him as they flashed past the city limits sign.

“How about this,” he said. “I’ll sneak you in, and hide you until I’m sure it’s safe, and that my household hasn’t been… compromised. Nobody has to know.”

“You would keep me secret from your own blood?”

Astrid thought of Reagan’s face.

“Yep,” he said.

Astrid couldn’t read Dog’s silence under the sleezy, but Dog maintained the silence as they turned off the main road and crunched onto gravel once more. Astrid caught a glimpse of the city lights, the oasis of coffee shops and once-familiar bars, and then he turned, and the trees surrounding the property cut off everything but the light pollution.

He flicked off the headlights before they turned the corner to face the house. Tall, hogged with ivy, it gave an impression of a refined, miniature estate. The unshorn ivy and wrap around porch hid the chaos of a split level renting situation that had hosted him for three successful semesters, one really awful one, and now served as a kind of embarrassing refuge from the world. His two roommates had gone abroad, leaving things quiet, but the holes in the drywall and weed stink in the upstairs closet were forever.

Very slowly and, he hoped, silently, he drove around the back of the house and parked under the huge oak tree next to the back fence. He cut the ignition, and listened.

“I don’t think she heard us,” he said. “Now we just have to— you can take that thing off your head now.”

Dog pulled it off and, in the dark of the oak tree and shadow of the house, he cut a truly ominous outline. The high bones of his cheeks caught moonlight and gouged shadow down the rest of his face. A bit of light off a window touched the tip of his nose and his lower lip. The rest of his face was a black mask — a black mask with two copper coins for eyes, reflecting light like an animal’s. He looked at Astrid, and then turned silently, gazing out the windshield at the house.

“This is where I live,” ventured Astrid.

Dog offered nothing but his silent scrutiny.

“Okay.” Astrid unbuckled his seatbelt. “Here’s the plan: you hide in the backyard, I’ll go in and deal with my sister, and when it’s safe, I’ll come back out and sneak you in.”

Dog said nothing, only turned to gaze at him, oblique in the darkness. Thinking about what? A trap? That someone from ‘the Bloodponds’ was going to jump out from behind the rose bush and shank him?

Whatever.

Astrid got out of the car and went around to Dog’s side to let him out.

Dog emerged from the Mustang in the manner of Dracula coming out of his coffin, unfolding to his full height and looming over Astrid, who had managed to forget just how tall he was in the twenty minute drive. He had only a second to appreciate it before, once again, Dog threw an arm around his shoulders and proceeded to use him as a human crutch. Astrid strongly contemplating ditching him in the dirt of the back driveway.

He got him through the side gate to the backyard, which was swamped from old attempts at gardening, full of over-flowering shrubs. He carried Dog’s weight over the footstones half lost in the overgrown grass, past the remnants of an abandoned koi pond. Water still trickled half-hearted over the pebbles on a downward slope. “It used to be really nice back here,” he said. He could sense Dog’s eyes all over everything, and felt suddenly self conscious of how wild the yard had gotten. “We used to sit out drinking under the—”

The patio lights flickered on.

Astrid half fell, half stumbled sideways, dragging Dog behind a tree with him. Dog hissed, his leg jarred, and seized his arm. “What is it?”

“I can’t tell— your hair is in my face. _God_ you’re heavy. Lean on the tree for a second!”

Dog shifted his weight off, but still looked over Astrid’s head, hair falling like a curtain Astrid had to part to see out.

Nobody came outside, but he heard glass clinking through the open window, the sound of dishes being done, and indistinct conversation.

“Selina must be home,” he muttered.

“Who’s Selina?” asked Dog, leaning forward, more of his weight pressing down on Astrid’s shoulder again.

“Reagan’s girlfriend. Don’t worry about it; she’s supposed to be here.”

“You said only you and your sister lived here,” said Dog, light menace in his voice.

“Selina doesn’t live here. Calm down. She spends the night, weekends sometimes. I don’t know what she’s doing here now.” He scowled. He didn’t mind Selina, but he knew he was going to get his hair ruffled the second he walked in the front door. “This is better, actually— Reagan will be distracted. Okay, yeah. This is good. You stay here, I’ll go deal with them, and then I’ll let you in. Just stay here, right behind this tree, and don’t move until I come back. Can you do that?” He tried to give Dog a severe look, hard to do from below.

Dog scoffed. “I once sat unmoving in an icy rain for three days and three nights—”

“Great. Okay, I’ll be right back.”

He extricated himself from Dog and went back through the gates. Closing them, he spared one last glance at the tall, angular shape lingering in the darkness of the oak, copper eyes glinting back at him. Thinking one last, firm, _What the fuck?_, Astrid shut the gate and walked back up the path, keys jingling, ready to face his sister.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> s/o to crotiasunlawlol for Michael's last name and maplewoodsporthorses for the barn name


	4. do you want me to find a scented candle or something

Reagan met him at the door with a grin, immediately plunging Astrid into suspicion.

A whole head taller than him (but who wasn’t), Reagan had gotten their mom’s height and their dad’s bipolar disorder, somehow missing the crippling generalized depression that bit Astrid. You could tell she had already gone on her nightly 5k by the hair drying in a ponytail and the sweatpants that said ‘I’m _in_ for the night’.

“Why are you smiling?” he demanded. “Aren’t you supposed to be pissed off?”

“Sure, sure.” She flapped a hand to shut him up. “Later. I have a surprise for you.” She tried to pull him through the door but he remained rooted.

“What surprise?”

“It’s nothing from Mom and Dad, I promise.”

“It’s not my birthday,” he said, looking suspiciously past her into the empty hall.

“Oh my goddd,” she said. “Just come in.”

He let himself be dragged in, leaving his field boots next to the door. As he did, he realized that his — and Reagan’s hoard of sneakers — weren’t the only shoes by the door.

He recognized a pair.

“Wait a second—”

Before he could raise his guard, someone monkey-tackled him around the waist. He wiped out.

“My god damn _knees—_”

“Oh, you love it.”

Phuc dragged Astrid to his feet and immediately punched him in the shoulder, hard.

Also a head taller than Astrid (but who wasn’t), Phuc looked, dressed, and acted like he was trying to bring back 90s skater chic at all times. A strict vegan whose fear of needles was forever at odds with his dream of becoming a tattoo artist, he’d spent the last year and a half excavating Roman mosaics in Spain.

“I ate so much fucking cheese in France,” he said. “And I brought you this.” He held up and let unroll a t-shirt, one with a print of a cave painting on it. “It’s a horse!” It was. “From the caves at Lascaux.”

“Why is it huge?”

The shirt was about three times the width of Astrid’s torso. With a chunky belt, it would have made a passable dress.

“They only had XLs left, but I had to get you something. You can use it as a nightshirt or something.” He threw it to him. “So what the fuck, are you happy to see me or not?”

“I haven’t decided yet. Ask me again when my knee is healed.”

“Walk it off.” Phuc shadowboxed at him. “Andy brought you something, too.”

“Andrea’s here?”

“What’s the wifi password?” Astrid heard another familiar voice shout from the kitchen. “Who changed it from l’appel du vide?”

“Nobody could spell it—” began Astrid, walking through the kitchen doors, then slamming on the brakes again. “Oh, _fuck_ no.”

A three-tier birthday cake sat on the kitchen counter, and near it stood Reagan with her arm around Selina, who was wearing an apron and a look of triumph, her hair in a bun and a bit of flour on her nose. Andrea sat on a stool with her feet (in their trademark combat boots) on another stool, holding her phone this way and that in the air as if changing its orientation would make it magically connect to the wifi. She looked exactly the same as when she had left to study mottled purse crabs, her buzzcut the same shade of pink, her skin maybe a little darker from the mediterranean sun.

She waved at him.

“No,” said Astrid again.

“Yes,” said Phuc, shoving him through the doorway and grappling him into a seat.

“It’s not even my birthday,” protested Astrid.

“Yeah, but we missed it.” Andrea swung her feet off the stool and tossed her phone on the counter. “Besides, Selina has a culinary school test or something to study for.”

“If this thing collapsed, you can eat it with your hands. I officially give up on stacked cakes,” said Selina into a glass of wine.

“It looks great, babe.” Reagan kissed her on the cheek. “Much better than the last two monstrosities.”

Selina drained her glass.

“I brought back wine.” Andrea indicated an open bottle on the counter with a grand gesture. “Like… a lot of wine. I know it’s no oversized paleolithic art t-shirt, but I did try.”

“Hey, my shirt is awesome,” said Phuc. “Here, put it on.”

“Get off!”

“Come onnnn!”

“Phuc, stop harassing Astrid and sit down,” said Reagan. “I’ve been smelling this thing all day and I want to eat some damn cake.”

Phuc balled up the shirt, tossed it at Astrid like shooting a hoop, and let him be, going to rest his chin on the top of Andreas’s head.

Astrid caught the shirt. “When did you guys even get back?” he asked.

“Literally last night,” said Phuc. “Full disclosure, I slept the entire day and have no sense of time. It could actually be your birthday and I would have no idea.”

“How have things been?” asked Andrea.

“Hey, what flavor of cake is this?” asked Astrid.

They all insisted on lighting candles and having him blow them out. When it came to making a wish, Astrid blanked on everything but ‘please don’t let them find out about the weird motherfucker I hid in the backyard’. As they cut the cake, he tried not to look too hard out the back windows, in hopes that none of them would look out, either.

“How long are you guys staying?” he asked, taking the piece of cake Selina handed him. Chocolate.

Everyone at the table exchanged a look— a weird, cautiously optimistic, keeping-things-secret-from-Fragile-Astrid look.

“What?” he asked.

“We’re back,” said Andrea. “Like for good. Well, at least for the next year for good. Phuc’s in thesis territory now, and I’m done with fieldwork until Dr. Stras gets his passport restored. Customs was not happy about the specimens he accidentally let loose in the airport.”

“We thought,” said Phuc, glancing over Andrea’s head at Reagan, before looking back at Astrid. “We could, you know. Move back in.”

Reagan was watching Astrid over her glass of wine.

He resented it suddenly, all of it, in one hot sweep of his gut— the influx of presents, the surprise of the fake party, and even the return of his friends, as much as he had missed them.

As ludicrous as the idea was, part of him even leapt to the suspicion that their return had been orchestrated, too, just like this party. As if they had been summoned, persuaded, by someone in his family or even out of it, maybe Dr. Shaw herself, thinking it would be better for Astrid to have his old friends around. Like a zoo animal being showered with enrichment.

The cake was too sweet for him.

“What, are you asking my permission?” He put on a smile. “I’m not the landlord. Reagan, are you really gonna let them back in after what happened with the koi pond?”

“Hey!” protested Phuc. “None of them died.”

“The pond looked like a bubble bath for a month.”

Reagan waved it off. “All water under the bridge.”

“Hell yeah, then,” said Astrid. He slapped palms with Andrea. “Welcome home.”

—

They maimed two tiers of Selina’s cake, and she seemed cheered to watch them wreck it, sitting back with her fifth glass of wine and a glowing expression as they tried their best to wedge the remnants into a tupperware container.

“Fuck it up, kids,” she said. “God, I didn’t think anything would make me miss working on croissants. So much laminating… so much butter…”

“You think you’ve had enough, babe?” asked Reagan, reaching for the glass.

“Of looking at this kitchen, yes,” said Selina, ducking out of reach. “_I’m_ going to bed. You kids… don’t party too hard.”

She swayed, and Reagan caught her by the arm. “Okay, okay, let’s get you into bed.”

“We should probably turn in, too,” said Andrea, reaching for Phuc’s hand over the counter. His eyelids were drooping hard; the caloric overload seemed close to doing him in. “Reagan said we could have the same room upstairs.”

“Do you need me to grab you blankets, or pillows, or anything?”

“Nope, she got us all set up while we were waiting for you to get home.”

“Oh, yeah.” Again, the galling sense that all of this had been orchestrated for him, behind his back. He wondered how much they had heard of Reagan yelling at him over the phone about the missing appointments.

“Were you out seeing Autumn?” she asked.

He couldn’t control his flinch. She realized her mistake a second too late.

“Oh. Astrid, I’m sorry—”

“No, it’s fine,” he said. “Lacey is the new one.”

“Right. Lacey. Is she nice?”

“Yep. She’s great.”

He bit the inside of his cheek in the humiliating silence that followed.

“Well,” she said, into the silence. “We’ll go pass out, then. Come on, Phuc.”

Phuc had the energy to give Astrid a peace sign on the way out.

Astrid waited until the sounds of footsteps had faded— then bolted for the backdoor.

Flicking on the patio lights as he went out, he glanced up at the house to make sure all the windows were shuttered, then took the steps two at a time down to the grass. He made a beeline for the tree where he had left Dog.

“Oh, color me _not_ fucking surprised.”

The son of a bitch was gone.

Astrid looked around the backyard, thick with shrubs and shadow. “Where did you go?” he hissed. Dog couldn’t have gotten far on that leg.

A leaf wafted down and landed in his hair.

He picked it off, stared at it, then whipped his head up.

A pair of bright copper eyes glowered at him from the branches of the tree.

“What the fuck are you doing up there?” demanded Astrid in a low hiss.

“I saw the shadows of hounds, out in the darkness,” said Dog’s outline. “Their shadows.”

“Hounds?”

Astrid remembered their closest neighbor and his two asshole, escape artist huskies. They were probably loose again.

He sighed. “It’ll be fine. Come down.”

He couldn’t see anything but those nearly-glowing eyes, but he read suspicion in Dog’s total silence. His rolled his eyes.

“If they show up again, I’ll deal with them.”

“You have magic to turn away wild creatures?”

“Yeah, it’s called mace.”

After a moment of silent consideration, Dog climbed down, showering Astrid in leaves and bits of small branches; he didn’t cover his face in time, and had to spit a piece of bark out of his mouth.

Grounded, Dog gave him a long, up and down look of judgment. “You were gone a long time.”

“My sister surprised me. Some of my old friends are back in town… and staying here, now.” He sighed and ran his hands through his hair to get the leaf clutter out of it.

“More guests?”

“Not guests. They used to live here. Now they’re back.”

“And?” asked Dog. “What does this mean for us?”

“Relax. It’ll be fine.”

_Will it, though?_

“I can still hide you in the basement,” he said, thinking aloud. “They’re all staying upstairs. Heads up, though, it’s not exactly a Hilton down there.”

“‘Hilton’?” Dog’s eyes narrowed.

“Nevermind. It’ll be fine. Now, come on.”

He helped Dog hobble across the yard and up the stairs, gritting his teeth on every step. The only thing that kept him from griping was the sound of Dog’s breath hitching in his ear. That knee had to be hurting.

Astrid pushed open the back door and helped Dog sit down at the kitchen table, taking a breather and the opportunity to check and make sure no one was coming down the stairs. He glanced down the hall.

All dark. Dark and quiet. He turned back around. “I think we’re good,” he said.

Dog couldn’t have looked more alien than he did in the kitchen, like an extra from Lawrence of Arabia, or the version of the movie Astrid had watched on edibles. The surreal memory didn’t quite map onto this reality, but it vibed.

Under the bright lights he looked grimmer than ever. Climbing up and down out of the tree had struck the final blow to the left sleeve of his tunic, letting it drop off his shoulder, and now the fat scars stood out. Raised a full quarter inch off the skin, they ran long and wide, like stripes. Now, Astrid could see that they, and the scars around his wrists, weren’t the only marks. Scar tissue pocked and dotted Dog, like a feral cat bearing the proof of a thousand battles for territory, or survival. A long, delicate line zigzagged from his left temple through his eyebrow, nearly missing his eye with its long lashes, and skipped off the top of his nose.

Astrid wondered what else was covered by the dirt, or by Dog’s bloody, tattered clothes, or by his long hair, the knots in it so numerous they looked almost intentional. He thought he could probably spend weeks looking at the guy and notice a new, grim little detail every day.

He should have been disturbed. Maybe scared. There were knives in this kitchen, plenty of them, and Selina made sure they stayed sharp. _‘A dull knife is a dangerous knife.’_

He imagined Dog could make any knife dangerous.

“Is there water?” asked Dog.

“Oh shit, yeah. Sorry.”

He got a mug from the cupboard; it seemed safer than glass. As if that mattered. He filled it at the sink and handed it over. Dog watched the process with a bemused squint — maybe the bright lights bothered his strange eyes? — but accepted the water and downed it in moments.

How long had he gone without drinking? Astrid felt guilty he hadn’t thought of it earlier.

“Hang on,” he said. He took the empty mug to refill it and stopped to dig aspirin out of the cupboard. “Here, take this.”

Dog looked at the pills sitting flat on Astrid’s palm.

“Medicine?”

“Yeah. Pain reliever, fever reducer. Might help a bit with the leg.”

“You keep saying you’re not a physician—” began Dog, frowning.

“I didn’t make them, Jesus Christ. I bought them at the store. Please just take them.”

Dog obeyed, downed his mug and set it on the counter, and pointed out: “It’s rude not to offer your guest something to eat. When I was a guest at the Bloodponds they held a banquet that lasted ten days and ten nights—”

“All right, all right. Let me get you tucked away downstairs and then I’ll bring you something to eat. That work for you?”

In answer, Dog held up his empty mug.

—

Getting Dog down the basement steps was easier than getting him up the porch steps, but more nerve wracking, as the basement steps weren’t especially well maintained and Astrid was half-sure that at any moment the two of them were going to slip and go crashing to the floor. The lightbulbs hadn’t been changed in at least a year, and some of them had gone out entirely, so when they reached the bottom step Astrid had to pull out his phone to use as a light. He felt Dog physically startle at the sight but say nothing.

“I used to sleep down here, so it’s dusty, but livable,” he said. They bypassed the first room, unfinished and full of dusty boxes, down the narrow hall to the doorway across from what had once been the laundry room. He pushed the door open with his foot and cringed.

“Listen,” he said. “I had a bit of a hoarding problem.”

The bedroom had more tack in it than it did bed, dresser, or bookshelf, all of which were crammed into a corner half-hidden by what looked like the contents of half a barn. Bridles dangled from coat racks, all styles: saddleseat bridles with the glossy red nosebands, western bridles with romal reins, endurance style halter bridles, and unending hung dusty and mildewy english bridles that needed a week’s worth of TLC to bring back to life.

He had only two saddle racks, so the other dozen of them rested up against the walls. Unusable, mostly, due to crunchy-sounding broken trees or irreparable leather damage, they ran the gamut from cutbacks to australian stock saddles to all purpose.

And god, the mess of reins, stirrups, and girths forming a Gordian knot in the corner.

“I’m bad at getting rid of things,” he said. “Sorry, I know it smells—”

“It smells like leather and oil,” said Dog. “And horses.”

“Yeah, I know. Do you want me to find a scented candle, or something?”

“It’s good,” declared Dog. He released Astrid and hopped the few feet to the bed, testing it first with a pointed finger, then sitting on the edge and swinging his legs over to lie on his back. He was so long, his feet dangled over the edge.

“So,” said Astrid. “I’m going to find you something to eat. Are you… okay here?”

Dog made a noise of possible assent and did not look at him.

“Okay. Great.” Astrid rolled his eyes and shut the door. It still felt dangerous leaving him unattended, but Dog couldn’t get up to much trouble in there.

He hoped.

Upstairs, he stared into the fridge and wondered just what a guy from the (what was it?) black towers and river of death liked to eat. He guessed that they hadn’t served pudding cups or greek yogurt at the Bloodponds’ epic banquet.

Bread was a universal food, right?

He grabbed a loaf of wonderbread (Selina’s), and a loaf of whole wheat seed-stuffed non-GMO stuff (Reagan’s), and stacked a few pieces of each on a plate.

What was another universal foodstuff?

Meat?

Thanks to Reagan’s latest vegan phase, all they had in the house was some unprepared tofu and fake chicken nuggets.

He tossed the nuggets in the microwave and made himself a little stack of wonderbread PB&Js, cut into triangles with the crusts pared off to cheer himself up.

He dumped the nuggets on a plate, steaming, and only then did it occur to him that even if the fake meat — the seitan, whatever it was — passed as meat, Dog almost definitely wasn’t used to eating meat in nugget form.

Fuck it, though.

He chucked a rough assembly of other possible food options — saltine crackers, some really old pecans, a box of raisins — on the plate, and checked the hall one more to make sure it was still dark and quiet.

It was.

He snagged one last thing before heading back down: the first aid kit under the kitchen sink.

When he returned to the basement room, he found Dog exactly how he had left him, laying on his back with hands folded on his chest, staring at the cobwebbed ceiling. His stillness, compared to his obnoxious curiosity in the car, made Astrid suspicious.

“Are you okay?” he asked, resting the plate and first aid kit on top of the dresser.

“I’ve been drained of all my power, Astrid,” said Dog, lifting his fingers to display a sad, single sparkle of green. “I was so well feared, from my home to the very edge of the desert. Who will fear me now?”

“Probably lots of people,” said Astrid. “You’re very tall and you have a very threatening energy… kind of like Kiefer Sutherland in Lost Boys.”

“Lost Boys?”

“Yeah, vampire flick. It was basically my gay awakening.”

“Gay awakening?”

“Don’t worry about it. Look— you have more immediate things to worry about. Eat, sleep, heal, then get existential. That’s the order I try to do things in, anyway.”

“Hmm.” Dog opened and closed his fingers thoughtfully. “You don’t fear me,” he pointed out. Almost reprovingly.

“I have generalized anxiety disorder; everything scares me, so I’m just used to it. Now move over. I want to look at your leg again.”

Dog made room.

Astrid popped open the lid of the kit, found the scissors, and cut off the rest of the bottom of the weird pant leg and through the vet wrap, to peel off his first effort at bandaging.

“That doesn’t look so bad.”

A fair amount of blood had soaked into the bandage, but it was dry, now. An early attempt at scabbing came off with the bandage, and a few fresh drops welled up, but aside from a nearly imperceptible twitch, Dog didn’t flinch or pull away.

“Does it hurt?” asked Astrid, probing gently around the edge for any kind of abnormal heat or swelling, not that it was soon enough for infection to set in, anyway.

“No more than my empty stomach.”

“Jesus Christ.” Astrid reached up and thrust the plate into Dog’s hands. “Go for it.” He went back to the wound, daubing on neosporin, only looking up after the silence went on for too long. He glanced up to see Dog staring at the plate with a look of absolute confusion.

“We’re not exactly stocked for guests.” Astrid defended himself. “I don’t know what you eat, anyway. It’s bread and meat.” Partially true. “Try it— no, not that.”

Too late; Dog had already bitten into one of the PB&Js. His expression wasn’t unlike Lacey’s the time she got ahold of Astrid’s menthol cough drops. Astrid bit his lip _hard_ to keep from laughing. Maybe it was a good surprise, or maybe Dog was just exercising his version of good manners, but he didn’t spit it out.

“Tell you what,” said Astrid. “You give me a list and I’ll hit the store tomorrow, grab you whatever you want.”

“That’s not necessary,” said Dog. “This is sufficient.” He pulled the plate closer, almost defensively, and took a second bite of PB&J.

Astrid resisted another smile. “Well, I think your leg is going to be fine.” He started wrapping it again. “That’s one less thing to worry about. I think I need a checklist to deal with everything else. I guess first we’ll need to—”

“I need a horse.”

Astrid looked up, hand still resting on the bandage, at Dog’s suddenly dead serious expression.

“I’m sorry,” said Astrid. “You need a what.”

“I need a horse,” said Dog, and bit emphatically into his second PB&J.


	5. eye appointment -puking emoji-

“Why do you need a horse?”

“To ride, Astrid,” said Dog, with the mild disdain of someone stating the obvious.

“Where do you need to ride a horse to? I have a car.”

“The destination isn’t important,” dismissed Dog. “My people create power through riding horses. The hot wind, the churning of hooves— it is the fount of power no man on two feet can manifest or control.”

“You get your magic powers from riding horses?”

“Yes.”

Astrid had a sudden mental image of Dog on a horse in a giant hamster wheel, galloping and spinning it, hooked up to a generator collecting electricity. It kind of made sense— as much sense as any of this did.

“So if you ride enough horses, you can make fireballs in your hands?”

“If I ride enough horses, I think I can get home, Astrid.”

The earnestness in Dog’s voice, and the way he looked at him, made Astrid feel suddenly itchy. Claustrophobic. “Oh,” he said.

“And then I can cut my brother’s throat, and feed him to the crocodiles, which is a better death than he has earned.”

“Ohh,” he said.

“But for now,” declared Dog. “I must rest.” And he turned over on his side, dropped his head onto the dust old pillow, and seemed to fall instantly asleep.

Astrid stared at his still back.

The scars there brought back a memory.

Two or so years ago, a horse had spent a few months at Idyll Hour. An abuse case with Amish origins, lash marks livid through his white coat, he’d had a handsome face with a roman nose and spooky blue eyes. The first time he flipped, they had him vet checked, got him chiro and his saddle refit, and gave him a week off. The second time, they had the vet out again.

Michael didn’t let Astrid watch the euthanasia. “Horses don’t go down easy,” he’d said. “They’re not like dogs.”

Astrid thought about that a lot.

What had Dog done to earn those marks?

He would have to get him some new clothes, he thought absently. He was already dreading trying to coerce Dog through the process of putting on jeans. But he couldn’t just let him walk around in whatever this was.

Though even in jeans and a t-shirt, who wouldn’t look twice at the 6’6” guy with an expression like the devil and long hair full of wind knots? Astrid was itching to work some Cowboy Magic through that mess. He actually winced thinking how Dog would take to _that_ idea.

_How the hell am I going to get him on a horse?_

And why was he even considering it?

He wondered if there had been something else to that communication spell Dog had cast, something that made Astrid more inclined to help, that made him more sympathetic to the vocally bloodyminded stranger.

Or maybe it was that Dog had clearly been beat to hell even before getting hit by a car, and Astrid felt guilty. And also was a huge sucker.

He sat for a while debating if he should try and put a blanket over him. He wouldn’t have been surprised if Dog struck out on instinct, but, he reasoned, he’d put enough blankets on enough ornery horses — much taller and heavier than Dog — that he figured he could risk it.

He grabbed a blanket crumpled at the foot of the bed, pulled it up, and gently let it fall over Dog’s back.

No reaction.

Dare he tuck it in?

He gave it a shot.

Poking here and there, keeping one eye on the still head of hair on the pillow, he folded the edges of the blanket in. Dog didn’t stir.

Maybe he was just really fucking out of it.

Astrid stood there a minute longer, arms crossed, loathe to leave the sleeping stranger unattended.

“Well, you’re lucky it was my car you ran out in front of, and not someone else’s,” he said finally. He left the questionable snack plate behind and closed the door behind him in the hall, leaving a tiny crack in case Dog woke up, didn’t know how to use doorknobs, and freaked out.

He let out a long exhale in the basement hallway.

“Whatcha doin’ down here?”

Astrid jumped so hard he cracked his neck.

Reagan stood at the bottom of the stairs, leaning on the banister with her arms crossed, giving him that penetrating look he’d been hoping to evade all evening. The unspoken-because-it-didn’t-have-to-be-spoken, ‘are you okay?’ look.

“Just digging through old stuff,” he said.

“Yeah?” she said.

“Yeah, you know… feeling nostalgic.”

“Mm,” she said, with the same look. He felt his initial prickle of irritation spike.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Or I’m not fine, I’m not happy, but I don’t have to be happy all the time, okay?”

“I don’t expect you to be happy all the time,” she said. “I just want you to talk to me. Whether you feel bad, good, whatever. Remember when we used to just bitch to each other about everything? Like, everything. School. Roommates. Groceries. Plumbing. I mean, just like, _really_ bitch.”

“You want me to bitch at you about plumbing?”

“When was the last time you bitched at me about anything?”

“Does it count if I bitch at you now about you climbing up my ass?”

He wished she would glare at him, get pissed, instead of continuing to give him those somber, concerned, so-close-to-pity eyes.

“Am I a bitch for not wanting my brother to end up in the hospital again?”

He felt his cheeks flame and forgot about the stranger in the other room entirely.

“I’m not a kid,” he snapped. “Just because Mom and Dad pay your bills to live with me doesn’t make you my babysitter.”

Now her cheeks flamed.

He hated how quickly her anger was replaced by the same shut-down concern.

“Do you want me to leave you alone?” she asked.

“Yeah, I want you to leave me alone.”

She glanced around the dusty basement, looked at him one more time, and nodded. Or shook her head. It was too hard to tell, the gesture was so small.

He waited until he heard her footsteps finished at the top of the steps and fade upstairs into the kitchen, and saw the light flick off. Then he sat down in the hall and put his face in his hands.

God, he had been crying so much lately, it was starting to get boring.

This time, he did remember his guest, and kept his tears silent aside from the occasional sniffle.

At least by the time he was done crying, he was tired enough to fall asleep sitting up against the wall, grabbing himself only a blanket from the laundry room against the basement chill.

At least, he thought, Reagan would be too focused on giving him his space that she wouldn’t question him staying downstairs, or come down and accidentally see Dog.

There were some pros to being the family piece of shit.

Falling asleep against the wall, tears still drying on his cheeks, he didn’t see the glint of copper eyes glinting at him through the cracked door, observing in silence.

—

His alarm beat him awake at the usual hour. The sun didn’t reach into the basement, so for a moment Astrid blinked at finding himself in the dark, lying on the cold hard floor staring at old gray drywall. It took a moment for last night’s events to catch up with his fuzzy consciousness, but when they did, the memory struck him like a hammer.

He sat bolt upright, blanket falling to the floor, and looked up at the stranger from the night before, very real and just as giant as Astrid remembered him, sitting against the opposite wall working a mess of leather straps in his hands.

Dog had discarded his ripped and blood tunic, replacing it with the blanket Astrid had given him, slit down the middle and worn like a poncho. He had contorted his long hair into a knot behind his head.

“What are you doing?” asked Astrid, head still thick with sleep.

“Making a bridle.”

“There were… at least twenty different bridles in this room.”

Dog made a dismissive noise. “Not what I need.”

“Okay. What kind of bridle do you need? What are you making?”

“A crocodile bridle.”

“A… crocodile bridle?”

“A bridle of my own invention,” said Dog, with an enthusiasm Astrid hadn’t seen in him up to this point. He held up the tangle of leather. “It helped me to win the crocodile race six years in a row.”

“Okay, I know I’m gonna regret asking, but what’s a crocodile race?”

“A race run as twilight nears, over the banks of the river. As the sun begins to set, the crocodiles come to shore. When the sun finally sinks below the horizon, the rider at the fore wins.”

“On average, how many horses and riders get eaten each race?”

“Only the slow ones.”

“Yeah, that’s not a number.”

“I’m hungry again,” announced Dog, putting down his invention. “I thought it would be rude to wake you.” _And he let that stop him?_ “But you are neglecting your guest.”

Astrid rubbed his eyes. “Do you want another PB&J?”

“PB&J?”

“Yeah, the sandwiches from last night.”

“Sandwiches?”

“Okay, I’m gonna go make some more.” Astrid got up, dusting himself off and shaking out his blanket. “I’ll find out what people are doing today; hopefully I can get them out of the house somehow, and you can have a shower.”

“Shower?”

Astrid sighed.

“I’ll be right back,” he said.

He found the kitchen mercifully and suspiciously empty. Usually, this time of day on a weekend, Reagan would have just gotten back from her run and Selina would be making breakfast. He checked the sink— no dishes. He checked out the window — no car. Reagan had gone out.

He felt bitter about it for a moment before wondering, if Reagan was gone, were the others? He didn’t see their cars, either, just the bumper of his own.

He glanced up the hallway at the stairs. He didn’t hear anything.

He shot off a text.

_Astrid: you still passed out?_

It only took a minute to get a response.

_Phuc: eye appointment -puking emoji-_

_Astrid: Andy drive u?_

_Phuc: y -hang ten emoji-_

_Astrid: when r u back?_

_Phuc: few hrs. Soz. thought u would sleep in -:/ emoji- _

_Astrid: ya im going back 2 bed lmao_

_Phuc: bfast of champions when we get back -croissant emoji- -bacon emoji- -eggs emoji- _

_Astrid: -hang ten emoji-_

He put his phone away and bit his thumb in thought, looking up the vacant stairs.

They would have to be fast.

—

“Will you stop touching literally everyone’s shit? Reagan already gets pissed if she thinks I moved her conditioner an inch.”

Dog would not stop. The second he accidentally popped open the lid of Reagan’s Eucalyptus Spearmint shower gel, Astrid had lost control entirely. He couldn’t physically stop Dog from opening and smelling every single bottle; Dog was keenly aware of their height difference and simply held his arms up out of reach. Astrid felt like he was trying to worm the world’s most uncooperative horse. Finally he gave up, leaving Dog to rifle through the bathroom cabinet like a raccoon in garbage.

“These are fantastic,” said Dog, nose deep in Champagne Toast. “Your family must be wealthy, to have access to such luxuries.”

Most people were more impressed by the Mustang than the Bath and Bodyworks.

Astrid fished a towel out of the closet and grabbed Dog by the elbow. Dog glowered down at him out of the corner of his eye, arm held high up in the air, refusing to surrender Cactus Blossom.

“You can use _one_ shampoo,” said Astrid, holding up his finger. “_One._ And don’t go crazy with it. We need to make this fast, before someone comes home. Here is your towel—” He looped it over Dog’s free arm. “And some clothes.” The oversized Lascaux horse t-shirt from Phuc, and a pair of sweatpants left behind by Reagan’s ex girlfriend, who played basketball. He wasn’t sure the pants would come down past Dog’s knees, but it was better than nothing. “Just leave your dirty clothes and I’ll put them in the wash.” And then, what, repair them? And let Dog wear them in public?

One panic attack at a time, he told himself.

“You turn the nozzle this way for hot water, this way for cold,” he explained, leaning over the bath. “And you flip this lever to plug the bottom—”

“I think I can figure out how to take a bath,” said Dog disdainfully. Astrid, still bent over, looked all the way up at him: dressed in rags, scarred as fuck and grimy as hell, holding an armful of Bath and Bodyworks products and looking at Astrid with scorn bordering on princely.

“You know what?” Astrid straightened up. “Go for it. You have fifteen minutes. Go crazy.”

He left Dog in the bathroom, shutting the door, and shutting another door in his mind, closing away the _‘What if he slips and falls and breaks his head open?’_ and the _‘What if he gets trapped in the shower curtain?’_ and the _‘What if he just walks out naked?’_

_One panic attack at a time, Astrid. One panic attack at a time._

He heard the water turn on. Listening keenly on the other side of the door, he waited for an exclamation, a sign that Dog had made the water way too hot or way too cold, but nothing. Either Dog really did know how to work a bath, or he was tight-lipped about revealing his own ignorance.

Soon the smell of Cucumber Melon began to creep underneath to the door.

Sitting against the opposite wall, Astrid bit his lip against a smile. He should have given Dog a bath mitt, it occurred to him. The guy had a lot of grime to work off. It might have been easiest to spray Dog down with a high-powered hose, like a horse in a wash stall.

The front door opened downstairs.

_Oh, shit._

Fucking shit.

Astrid jumped to his feet and checked his phone.

Fucking nothing.

“Hey, Astrid,” hollered a voice from downstairs. “You still up?” Phuc.

Fucking. Shit.

“Guess who got the day of their optometrist appointment wrong?” Andy called out. “This idiot.”

“He’s in the shower.” Phuc. “Help me put this shit away.”

“You put it away, I need to grab my meds.”

Astrid had about ten seconds until she reached the top of the stairs. Ten seconds to think of twenty useless plans and thirty ineffective excuses.

And then Andy reached the top of the stairs, raising her eyebrows to see him standing there.

“Oh,” she said. “I thought you were in the shower.”

“Yep,” he said. “Yeah, well, I was just about to hop in. Just letting the water—”

The water shut off.

“—warm up…” His voice trailed off.

She looked at him.

He looked at her.

Her expression was terrifyingly neutral. Her eyes narrowed only a centimeter. “Just about to hop in, huh?” she asked.

“Listen—”

Andrea leaned over the balcony and shouted. “_Phuc!_ Drop the croissants and get up here!”

“No,” said Astrid, in fruitless denial.

“What is it?” Phuc called back.

“It’s nothing!” shouted Astrid. “Don’t come up here!”

“I’m coming!” Phuc shouted back. Astrid heard the sound of groceries being abandoned in a hurry.

Phuc took the steps two at a time, wasting no time reaching the top, breathlessly asking, “What is it?”

Andrea replied by pointing at the shadow of feet moved under the bathroom door.

Phuc looked from the shadows to Astrid, then back and forth again. “No,” he said, aghast, and also delighted.

“It’s not—” tried Astrid. “It’s just—”

The bathroom door opened.

Dog stood there— or rather, loomed there, head of wet hair nearly brushing the top of the doorway, dripping onto his shoulders. The clothes fit, but clashed with him horribly. In his native dress, he’d looked otherworldly but _appropriate_, just appropriate for some other setting. In sweats and a t-shirt, he looked like a less rancid Richard Ramirez, with his high, knifing cheekbones, and intense, bordering-on-malevolent eyes. Now that his hair was wet, and pushed back behind his ears, the true length of his eyelashes revealed themselves, and he measured Andy and Phuc from beneath them, before flicking his copper gaze back at Astrid.

“Astrid,” said Phuc, in delight. “You big, fat, lying slut.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u cursed-tale on tumblr for being my beta reading rock. u honor me


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